Innovation Against All Odds

Introducing the inaugural report in the Open Foresight Series, which titled 'Innovation Against All Odds' discusses seminal shifts shaping innovation at the edge worldwide. Independent, published open-access on several platforms under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), 70-pages and over 20,000 words, the work features unique insights from renown thought leaders spanning myriad fields.

Issues discussed in the report include, among others, the nature of systemic change and how it impacts upon the innovation process; neurodiversity and diversity more generally, and innovation; transdisciplinary research and practice, and the splicing of fields; changes catalysed by the pandemic, and why some are likely here to stay, but others aren't; how artificial intelligence, big data and other technological advances are illuminating the risks and opportunities for innovators like never before; and drivers of evolution and extinction in companies at all scales. Fourteen key trends are presented spanning areas including environment, materials, design, engineering, architecture, manufacturing, retail, distribution, work-life, community, education, socialising, and life goals, together with key questions and considerations that innovation-led businesses need consider now and in the years ahead. The report also presents three scenarios [find below] that frame some of the possible risks and possible opportunities here through mid-century, together with a recommend reading list.

Individuals that kindly provided quotes and insights for the work include [in order of citation] Prof. Peter Frankopan, historian and author; Anna Simpson, Director of Flux Compass and curator of The Futures Centre; Soumaya Bhyer, Founder of Neuros; Prof. Andrew Adamatzky, University of the West of England; Dr. Kate Stone, Creative Scientist and Founder/CEO of Novalia; Dr. Robin Daniels, Managing Director of Red Pill Group; Nirav Patel, Chief Executive Officer, Framework; Paul Taylor, Innovation Coach at Bromford Lab; Mike Barry sustainable business champion and founder of MikeBarryEco; Dr. Mark Hinnells, Snr. Consultant at Ricardo Energy & Environment; Prof. Rachel Armstrong, University of Newcastle; Prof. Claudia Pasquero, UIBK/UCL and Cofounder of ecoLogicStudio; Kim Chandler McDonald, CEO of FlatWorld Integration and author; Dr. Mike Pitts, Deputy Challenge Director, Innovate UK; Oliver Health, Founder Oliver Heath Design; Valerie Bounds, Chief Strategy Officer, Aurora; Jane McMillan, fashion and textile designer and start-up coach; Nuno Silva, Chief Scientific Officer, UnifAI Technology; Marie-Claire Daly, Cofounder StreamGM; Anna Brettle, Founder/Business Development Director, Stellar; Prof. Andy Miah, University of Salford; Sam Bompas, Cofounder, Bompas & Parr; Anj Prof. Teyhou Smyth, Pepperdine University; Dr. Chris App, technology futurist and author; Dr. Stephen Law, philosopher and author; Kiran Pereira, Founder and Chief Storyteller, Sandstories; Dr. Kirsty Fairclough, Manchester Metropolitan University' Jacynth Basset, Founder of The Bias Cut and Ageism is Never in Style®.

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Extract from Innovation Against All Odds:

"Authored at the interface of disciples and demographies, this report is holistic in its methodology, rejecting siloed quantitative approaches of the all-too-quickly dateable kind, such as online surveys and spot-check polls. Drawing on insights from one-to-one conversations with individuals of whom the careers have been spent treading paths unknown to pioneer groundbreaking new ideas, inventions, and the industries they collectively manifest, together with review of data of copious kind, this work stresses the imperative for innovation led by highly informed choices on the part of businesses of every size, type, and location.

Forewarned is forearmed, and particularly when working against umpteen odds. Though often presented as either the sum of exponentially expanding and invariably disconnected parts or one of many qualitatively distinct trajectories of which the outcomes sit at tangents, in practice not [always] theory, the future - or at least parts of it - is relatively predictable: history does often repeat itself, and it repeats itself because at the level of systems outputs are coupled to inputs and thus patterns tend to emerge.... an array of advancements both technical and conceptual are enabling more dots to be joined, and joined at speeds unthinkable in the past. The Internet now laden with often deeply conflicting accounts of possible near futures, this report is designed to disseminate what developments in not one, not two, but many disciplines collectively suggest to be key considerations that they working in business and beyond need consider in the immediate years ahead."


Read in full on Issuu here or download on Academia or Researchgate.